HomePODCAST RECAPSPODCAST RECAP AND REVIEW: The Jim Cornette Experience on what his advice would be for OVW talent if he was still there, review of Raw 25, Great Muta’s green mist, Story Time with Ron Fuller (Ep. 216)

PODCAST RECAP AND REVIEW: The Jim Cornette Experience on what his advice would be for OVW talent if he was still there, review of Raw 25, Great Muta’s green mist, Story Time with Ron Fuller (Ep. 216)

00:00:00 – Intro: Jim welcomes us to a thrill pack episode which will include another equipment controversy, Story time with the Tennessee Stud, thoughts on Raw 25 and then introduces co-host Brian Last.

00:01:34 – Equipment controversy: Coming out of this weeks episode of Jim and Brian’s other podcast the Drive Thru, Jim and Brian get into it again about the microphone and headset Jim uses. They then play a clip of them both bickering about the headset from the episode: Brian and some of the audience say the new microphone sounds makes Jim sound like a telemarketer.

Jim doesn’t like the new one because the cable is so much shorter, it’s heavier and it plugs into the wrong side of his computer. There is an amusing moment where Jim keeps muting himself. Brian once again argues for a separate microphone and headphones set-up. They bicker about the previous headset, dubbed “old faithful”. Brian describes having to produce podcasts with Jim on “old faithful” as like being an agent for a match when the talents’ balls repeatedly pop out of his trunks.

We return to the main show and they continue to bicker. They ultimately decide to throw the issue over to a public vote on Twitter and announce hashtags to vote between mics, also soliciting recommendations for newer, better headsets for Jim.

Jim then quickly tells a story of recording promos for the WWF in a hastily erected pre-tape promo room in the early 90’s. After recording the promo, probably with Yokozuna, the sound guy requested everyone stay still and silent so he could capture room tone. This was something Curt Hennig later mercilessly abused the sound man for, thinking it was a joke.

00:22:50 – Jim out in public: Jim talks about leaving the house intentionally to see The Avett Brothers perform at The Palace in Louisville. The brothers, Seth and Scott, as well as their manager/producer Dolph are apparently fans. Jim reminisces about how The Palace was a movie theater when he was young and saw The Wrestler there, starring Verne Gagne. Jim talks up both the family who make up the band and the bands music. Jim adds they sold out 3 nights in a row, 2,500 people a night, and reportedly never played a song twice. Jim recommends the band and says how impressed he was. Brian adds, they don’t really get radio play, and have managed to build a fanbase without the modern trappings of musical success, selling albums rather than streaming and growing organically on their own. He adds, in a way, it is a template for what Independent Wrestling could be.

00:37:15 – Jim’s advice: Jim has been thinking about what he would tell talent if he was still at OVW, he has three points, they are:

“Don’t hang out with stupid goofy people, if you do you’ll generally end up doing stupid goofy s**t”

Brian asks if someone has admitted to a crime on Twitter, and Jim says it’s basically happening all the time.

00:39:28 Listener Mail: Jim reads an email from Joe about Cowboy Bob Ellis. Joe grew up in Kansas City, and in the 1959 he was 10 and the Cowboy was his favorite wrestler. In one match versus Otto Von Crupe, while cheering wildly Joe turned to his father who gave him such a stern hard stare that apparently he never cheered at another sporting event again. Joe is now 70. Brian and Jim laugh at the story and Jim wonders if it is too late to call Child Services.

Talk then turns to a letter relating to The Great Muta’s “Green Mist” and how realistic it is, and what Jim’s thoughts are on it. Brian compares it to the claw and how they are both still talked about, he then wonders if people will talk about Joey Ryan’s dick flip in 50 years. They both then hammer home the point of how they were both played as serious, hard hitting characters, so it worked and was believable.

00:48:42 – Various Adverts: Cornette’s collectibles and other podcasts are promoted.

00:54:04 – Story time with the Tennessee Stud: Jim introduces a segment with Ron Fuller where he discusses working in Australia in the early 1970’s and taking his family with him.

While be helped to find a home in Sydney he had expressed the hope to have a pool, so his very young boys could swim. The first house he was taken too seemed lovely until they realized the pool was actually a netted off part of Sydney harbor. Realizing the nets were shark nets they left the property never to return.

Later, going to Sydney Zoo, Ron and his family saw a fight between monkeys in their enclosure, after one small monkey snuck up to an alpha and jammed his finger up his bottom. The other monkeys and a growing crowd found this hilarious. The alpha beat the small monkey and moved away. After a while of showing his finger to the other monkeys and the crowd, the small monkey sidled up to him and did it again.

This happened 3 times as the crowd and reactions grew until. Ron feels like this was almost a performance and when it was time to close the performance, the alpha monkey looked out at the crowd and took a moment. The Alpha monkey then dumped in his hand, then jammed it in the smaller monkeys mouth.

Ron then tells another story of a time a Gorilla at Atlanta Zoo took a rather unhealthy liking to him and a crowd encouraged him for their own amusement.

Ron closes out the segment saying he hasn’t been back to a zoo in 35 years.

01:13:15 – Raw 25: Jim and Brian discuss the backlash to the Raw 25th Anniversary show, saying that it seems most people agree with their opinion on the matter. Jim says he was glad he wasn’t asked to attend. Jim praises the history lesson video opening. Talking about the McMahon’s segment, he praises Steph and Shane, even though he thought they were supposed to “on the outs” with each other. This made sense immediately when the point of it all was for Vince to be the heel, saying Vince is one of the best television performers ever. He says Austin’s performance was amazing, but believes the second stunner on Shane was Austin “calling an audible”.

Brian says he is glad Austin didn’t beat up any new, young talent, as it wouldn’t have made sense in the long run.

Jim criticisms in passing the next few segments. They discuss the 8 Women Tag, Jim found it painfully long and wonders what happened to Bayley being so successful.

Brian adds they messed up her push the way they mess up everyone who comes up from NXT.

Talking about the appearance of other talent, both are critical of the use of stars. Brian says B level talent was with Kurt Angle, C level talent was in the APA poker game and A level talent was at the Manhattan Center with DX.

Jim praises the Undertaker video package, but is critical of having him in the Manhattan Center as it denied him a big arena entrance and was ultimately meaningless.

Jim is also critical of the managers “beauty show” saying Eric Bischoff and William Regal should be doing more than just waving on any show.

Jim and Brian are also critical of the Miz and Roman Reigns. Jim mentions the Miz is unconvincing physically, has two guys in suits with him who add nothing and Jim had to look them up. He admits he can talk, but that he “has never talked me into him.” He is also critical of his technique on the facebuster. Talk then moves to Reigns who Brian says has been messed up as badly as Bayley. Jim says he seems uncomfortable and he’d “Diesel the s**t out of him” to make things work.

Jim talks about the Christian Peep Show segment, saying he is a fan of Christian.

Jim gives his basic understanding of the story they are telling without having seen any of it before. He says it took too long, but admits people seem to hate Jordan. Ultimately, Jim just wishes he’d seen Rollins versus Cesaro, as the whole thing feels so midcard and Rollins is better than that.

Jim asks if Alexa Bliss is 4 feet tall, while discussing the backstage interview. Adding it was nice to see Ric Flair, but all this could have been more and happened in the ring.

Jim then complains that, at this point, over half way through the show, there had been two matches. He mentions he was growing tired of all the backstage poker. Then discusses how Bray Wyatt seems to no longer convince somehow.

Jim then moves on to ask if anyone, on the actual show, appeared in both venues and wondered if anyone even considered having a match start in one show and end in the other. It seems so obvious to him and feels Bray and Matt Hardy was a perfect candidate.

Brian says he was in attendance at the first Raw 25 years ago and the audience was loud, diverse and involved and clearly at these shows, this didn’t seem to be the case. The Manhattan Center was angry they didn’t get anything and the Barclays seemed to be asleep. Brian blames expensive ticket. They priced out everyone who might have cared.

Jim is then critical of the parade of women brought out to, again, just wave and nothing more. He talks about his experience with the Hall of Fame last year. He said he attended the Hall of Fame, but had no interest in all the travel for Mania itself just to wave at the audience – noting that was why he wasn’t at the show.

Jim then complains about Jericho’s use in a small backstage segment, saying he is one of the biggest stars in the industry. Brian notes he was wearing his Alpha Club shirt from New Japan, which was a surprise.

Discussing Elias, Jim admits they must be working him up as a top guy if he gets to lay out John Cena, but admits he doesn’t know much about him. Brian gives a brief explanation of who he is and then says the rumor is it’ll be John Cena and Undertaker and Mania. Jim gets livid about how this Elias segment did nothing to build that at all.

Praising Rhyno, Jim discusses the tag match and how it felt like filler until the Dudley’s came out. He admits he isn’t knocking the Dudley’s but it all felt like a waste of time.

Jim says at least people seemed to want to see the DX reunion. He talks about how he once wanted to be able to sign Finn Balor as Prince Devitt back in his ROH days, but says he looked like a grade school child amid the behemoths in the ring in this segment. Moving on to The Revival, he briefly mentions how they’ve signed War Machine, saying he managed one against the other a few years ago. He says The Revival took everything from the legends perfectly, but wasn’t sure what it amounted too, especially for how quick it all happened. Saying it ultimately didn’t do anything to make the new guys look good, at the expense of the old guys coming back, especially when they’re one of the few teams who can actually work.

On the final segment of the show, Jim wonders why Kurt brought out all the managers and gimmicks to help enforce the three legitimate big guys they have in the company. During this section Jim says he spotted a South Park Member berry sign in the crowd, which featured two of the cute purple fruit saying “Member Pyro?” which made him laugh.

Jim says they devalued the act of simply advertising legends with their usage here as no one did anything to facilitate the new top stars. Jim says it did nothing to make him want to alter his regular Monday viewing habits. Brian says he’ll watch the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania, and the Raw after Mania, but anything else is dependent on a lot of things. Brian adds they don’t know how to manage nostalgia, believing this show will have driven off a lot of its record audience. Jim wonders how many will come back again to see who comes out to wave at them next week.

Brian gets angry about how much the show was a waste of his time, saying WWE did so much to put everyone else out of business only to deliver shows like this that will destroy their own business. Jim asks if Brian has been in his water supply as they seem to have swapped places. They laugh and sign off the show.

02:12:06 – Show wrap up.

Rating 7/10

Review

Boy did this one feel like a whistlestop! It certainly didn’t feel like it’s over 2 hour runtime. Jim admitted he was cutting stuff during the Listeners Mail segment, we had an alarmingly short Story time, which is usually at it’s best when it’s rambling, then the Raw 25 stuff went an hour, when it felt like it could have almost been the whole show.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it, but much like Raw 25 itself, I feel it could have been more focused on a few things, instead of trying to cram it to bursting. What we have here is very enjoyable if you have the time for it all, just expect to maybe get a little lost along the way trying to keep up!

If not, just listen to the Raw 25 bit and see how it chimes with your opinions of the show.

Timestamps

“00:00:00 – Intro”

“00:01:34 – Equipment controversy

“00:22:50 – Jim out in public

“00:37:15 – Jim’s advice

“00:39:28 Listeners Mail

“00:48:42 – Various Adverts

“00:54:04 – Story time with the Tennessee Stud”

“01:13:15 – Raw 25”

“02:12:06 – Show wrap up”

Writer Bio

Mark is an English storyteller, joker, and drunk.

This week he totally DID NOT scream when he opened a cupboard during a video shoot and found a human sized male “victim doll” used in crime scene recreations.

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